Dear members and colleagues,
Wishing you all the very best for 2021, I would like to provide you with the latest news from SITM:
European Medieval Drama
A warm thanks goes to Cora Dietl, who since her election as EMD General Editor and Reviews Editor managed to bring us back on schedule with the publication of three volumes of our annual journal, all of which contain papers from our congress at Genoa in July 2019. Apart from this, EMD 22 (2018), published in October 2019 collects papers presented at the IMC at Leeds in July 2018 and at the meeting of the German/Austrian/Swiss branch of SITM at Wienhausen in March 2018; EMD 23 (2019), published in April 2020, and EMD 24 (2020), published in July 2020, are dedicated to papers from the joint SITM / REED North-East Colloquium at Durham in July 2016 and the IMC at Leeds in July 2016.
In memoriam
It is with great sadness that I must share with you that three of our dear colleagues have passed away since our last congress:
Victor Scherb (University of Texas at Tyler) left us in October 2019. It comforts us in this great loss to know that his sister, Marie Scherb, will continue his membership. As all of you know, Marie accompanied Victor to many SITM conferences (attending, Toronto, Groningen, Giessen, Odense, Durham and most recently, Genoa), along with several of the International Medieval Congresses, held in Leeds.
At the end of January 2021, Heinz Bergner, former professor of English at the Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, departed. Although due to health reasons he has not been active for many years, we will keep his dear memory. He belonged to the very early group of members of SITM.
Just a few days ago, we have learnt that Peter Happé (University of Southampton) left us earlier this month. We already deeply lamented that he could not attend the Genoa conference, where all of us missed him very much, as he not only was an inspiring scholar but also one of the founders of our association.
I would like to express my heartfelt condolences to the relatives and friends of our deceased members.
17th Triennial Colloquium in Prague 2022
Our next colloquium will be held in Prague in July 2022. Please see the attached file for further details provided by Martin Bažil (Charles University, Prague), and Eliška Poláčková (Czech Academy of Sciences, Palacký University Olomouc). This information is also available on our website, together with the minutes from the General Assembly in Genoa, July 13, 2019.
Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society Awards
I’d like to draw your attention to the call for submission of the MRDS Awards.
MRDS is especially interested in graduate student papers from the Genoa conference (or any other conference in the last 18 months).
Submissions should be directed by February 15, to Carolyn Coulson: ccoulson2@su.edu
Medieval Studies at Leicester
In response to the attempt at eliminating medieval literature in the Department of English of the University of Leicester, more than 2800 academics from around the world signed an Open Letter, protesting against this announcement.
As President of SITM, I would like to suggest that we send our own letter to the Vice-Chancellor at Leicester, and to the Council and to the Chair of English. This will accentuate the impact of the reach of this erroneous decision. Please let me know your opinion about this possible initiative so that we can decide if we would like to take an action of support.
All the best!
Lenke Kovács
